Welcome to the Panic Room
by her name is erika
Summary: Sharon. Victoria. Nikki. Phyllis. They're all monsters. / Or, a Murder Coven anthology [AU]
1. The Heart of the Matter

**Welcome to the Panic Room  
show:** Young and the Restless  
 **central characters:** Sharon Collins, Phyllis Summers, Victoria Newman, Nikki Newman.  
 **disclaimer:** Nothing is mine except the plot and creative license I take with it. All characters are the property of the CBS, Sony and the Bell family. Any characters not recognized are mine. Nothing done or written is for profit, just for entertainment.  
 **summary:** Sharon. Victoria. Nikki. Phyllis. They're all monsters. / Or, a Murder Coven anthology [AU]  
 **note:** I was just goofing off on Twitter and pondering how these unlikely four women are tied to murder and then my imagination went off and this happened. JT's murder and Tessa's kidnapping is the launching point, but there's more dark stuff that will be explored. This will be four parts. Enjoy, and as always, I'd really appreciate your feedback and reviews.

* * *

 **Part I  
Sharon Collins:  
"The Heart of the Matter"**

* * *

There's a crackling of electricity in the air and she's the only one who could feel it.

It's not just cold outside, but just as chilly inside as Sharon looks from Victoria to Nikki. There's a sharpness in Nikki's eyes that can cut even her after all these years. It all has to stop. Absolutely. She agrees as Victoria's eyes accuse her of wavering.

"Mom and I will handle this, if you're going to develop a conscience now, Sharon."

There's a name rattling around in their minds and another on the tip of their tongues. It's a silent scream, the muted sound of a heavy body hitting carpet. In her nightmares, it's a vast area of soil and dirt where her eyes can see no beginning or no end. Her heart hammers in her chest, blood rushing in her eyes while her body and mind instinctively readies itself to fight whatever remains out there. That name still remains. It's the slight of a hand from its prison of cool soil, hands that remind her of those that yanking on puppet strings. The puppets are broken women, damaged women and sometimes, men filled with shame that twist on the ends of those of strings too. Sharon sees they can be strong as steel or as fragile as those holding a spider web together.

"Somebody has to. The both of you aren't thinking," she protests, evenly, unable to keep the edge out. Apprehension coils itself around her stomach and makes her feel as if she walks across a tightrope and can fall. She can fall, but she'll catch herself and balance until she aches. Just like Sharon balances her love for Mariah and her disdain for Tessa. "No," she exhales, gripping onto sanity because Victoria and Nikki neglect it.

"No?" Victoria questions, with a raised brow.

"No," she says, again, more forcefully. "We can't assume Tessa did this. You neutralized her, Victoria. You said you _believed_ her. Her long-term scam is over. Tessa didn't do this. She's fearful enough."

"Did she tell you that?" sneers Nikki. "Did she cry a little, make herself the wounded bird and find a way to reach that bleeding heart of yours? Before you get into your righteous outrage, you need to consider that she's lived with me, lived with you and made two of your children her marks."

"Don't talk to me like I don't think that, Nikki. No matter how I feel about Tessa, I can't be part of _this_. Whatever you two are planning to stop her, count me out."

"You've been part of this for months. The night you brought margaritas over here, you've been part of this," Victoria says finally, as if stepping out of a mental fog. It's like emerging from a dark haze that leaves her stance purposeful and her movements in intentional. Her eyes remind Sharon of a storm. The kind of storm that turns a calm sea into a weapon of nature, leaving all vessels and people at its mercy. Sharon knows that some abuse survivors destroy themselves. Other times, they want to destroy others. Something's changed in Victoria, she observed. It's like a switch, pre-JT and post-JT and she's watching this woman wrestle with something dark, and foreign against what is familiar. She knows what it's like especially with her share of mistakes and the bipolar disorder that will colour and contour every facet of her life. "Girl's Night was _your_ idea."

Nikki shakes her head and laughs sardonically, "You're talking as if we're going to have her killed."

"Because that's not in your skill set? You own the strip club you danced in while young women work for you and they idolize you. It's twisted! JT died because he was hurting Victoria, I'll give you that one, but you kill people," Sharon argues. "If anyone is in the way or crosses a Newman, they die. That's how things work. You and Victor let everybody know that!"

"Damn right, we do," she hisses, eyes defiant. "First of all, stripping is sometimes all these girls have, and I take care of all of them! They are people, not just employees!" Nikki sniffs. "It's not my problem Mariah didn't have the sense to let Tessa know. I know a couple of girls that would love someone like Mariah... I would think as her mother, you'd want that."

"I do—"

"Enough!" Victoria yells so loud it almost bounces off her walls and could rattle her house. "This is a waste of time. Maybe Tessa did lie to me. Maybe she didn't, but it doesn't sit right with me. It's worse for her than if she had set the stable fire and framed Dad."

Nikki softened and touched her daughter's arm. "What are you saying, sweetheart?"

"I'm saying that Tessa is one giant question mark now, Mom," Victoria answers, and Sharon finds herself locking gazes with her again. There is resolution. An answer, and the sound of a gavel hitting a bench or the sharp noise a blade makes when dragged across flesh. "Knowing what you know now, make a choice, Sharon. Are you in or out?"

—

There's a pill every day to even out the chemical imbalance in her brain. There's a therapist once a week to speak about the pendulum that swings and never stops. There's family and friendships for Sharon to be grateful for, and there's her own sense of hope that makes her motivated to always be better and do better. But she knows. She knows the darkness that ensnares her. With every client that comes through the doors of the GCPD, Sharon fixates on their situation and who bears the responsibility for causing this magnitude kind of pain. She sees herself in the withdrawn teenager, sexually assaulted and not sure of what to do with her baby. She sees herself in the divorcee who goes from having everything to being left with nothing but a bruised lip, a fading black eye, and questions of her future even as she smiles graciously at Sharon while hiding her trembling hands and tearful hazel eyes. With every victim report Sharon focuses on filling out for Rey, her preoccupation with the perpetrator grows. It rattles her nerves more than coffee can and through a mask of objectivity is a person who is human – just like her.

Sharon flips through the police report and the perpetrators materialize into people. Robert "Bobby" Carrington, a high school senior at GC High with potential and college prospects a new baby will destroy. Alejandra Contreras, an entry level high school teacher who abuses her partner under the pressures of work, an addiction that acts like a third spouse – a vortex.

Her empathy says she's doing the right thing and says she's working toward social justice.

The depression claws its way in and makes her question why people like Bobby and Alejandra will get justice that is neither fair or swift. Her mania, frantic and leaving her anxious, swings the pendulum again. It's steady and then picks up speed in time with Sharon's skipping heart.

 _Sometimes, justice means erasure._

 _Kill these monsters, Sharon. Someday, kill them both._

—

The brunette folds her arms and pins her with a look that send a shudder up her spine but Victoria doesn't scare her. Neither does Nikki. "My son came home from school a week early and wants answers. Answers I can't give him because they will break him either way. His father victimized his mother and his grandmother killed him in self-defence and then dumped his…corpse," the icy façade melts when Victoria takes in a shaky breath. Sharon hears the way her voice splinters. She pauses, and then hardens as quickly as Sharon blinks. Victoria intones, seriously, "Tessa is still in play. You can leave. I've always worked better without distractions, but for your own sake, you'd be better off helping us."

Sharon glances from mother and daughter and then thinks.

Tessa isn't a threat. She's sure she doesn't move JT's body or is working with anyone else, because that girl knows what danger is and would not be so foolish as to put herself in terror she is no stranger to.

Her daughter loves a con artist, and her son is forever her mark.

"Sharon!" Nikki snaps.

"What?" she snaps back, suddenly angry although she can't place its roots. It's from some quiet place within Sharon can't be introspective to look for right now. Maybe she will look within and make peace with it. Be disgusted with it, or peacefully co-exist. Sharon looks at Victoria and then Nikki. Her mind is made up. She takes a deep, cleansing breath for herself, more than anything. "Okay, I'm in. Only because I'll need answers for myself."

"Good. I'm glad you see reason. I've already let Phyllis know what's happening. She's too busy keeping her ass planted in the CEO chair over at Jabot tonight – whatever that means," Victoria explains as if breaking down the agenda of a board meeting after a pause. "I have to take care of something. Give me a minute."

She grabs her car keys and gives them to her mother. Nikki accepts them while Victoria says she'll be right back and heads up towards the stairs. It's Billy's night with the kids. He mentions that in passing at another impromptu meeting of the Wounded Hearts Society. He's a great friend since the seismic destruction of their relationships with Nick and Phyllis leave them raw and yet navigating aftershocks together. Victoria could use that.

Sharon watches Victoria's form disappear, and looks over to see Nikki watching her daughter the same way, worry in her face.

"For 250,000, Tessa set my daughter back. Unbelievable."

Sharon isn't speaking to Nikki like the woman she spent almost twenty-five battling for one reason or another, but as an observer. She sees a fearful mother underneath her venom. Everyone sees it but it's only in whispers and in passing glances only those who love Victoria truly understand. She's harder. She's more detached, more calculating, more ruthless than usual and any glimpses of warmth are rarer now.

"I…don't think she's okay, and it's beyond what trauma occurred because of JT."

Nikki sighs. "Something has broken in my daughter," she looks at Sharon, eyes shining with regret despite doing everything she can. It's what moms do. "I know she isn't, but she will be because as her mother, it's my duty."

She thinks of the three children she's obligated to protect until her last breath.

And then Sharon thinks of Cassie, the child she knows will stay just shy of fifteen.

—

"Victoria!" she calls, her voice travelling upstairs. After all, it's time sensitive. It's time sensitive for her sanity. The quicker this gets done, the easier she can deal with why two strangers won't let her go. If Nikki and Victoria are taking some control of this, she might as well herself. One of her baristas texts her to let her know Mariah is there and is thinking of breaking up with Tessa tonight. Eliza tells her Mariah's with a friend, but waiting. "Are you okay up there?"

"Give me a minute. I'll be down!"

Sharon taps a reply, thanking her and promises her paid days off.

"Okay," she turns to Nikki, "Mariah's at Crimson Lights."

"Good. Tessa's at home," Nikki discloses, with a smirk which makes Sharon sigh, almost exasperated. Sharon thinks, of course. Of course, Nikki knows that. It's not just Victor's eyes that roam this little town. She explains. "One of my girls live in her apartment complex."

Victoria comes bounding downstairs, and hands her a black bag and a mid-length rope. Sharon doesn't miss in the black gun in Victoria's hands, a silencer screwed into the barrel of the weapon. She watches Victoria push a magazine with the heel of her hand and make the gun disappear into the waistband of her jeans before rearranging her jacket and buttoning it.

Sharon glances down at the black bag and rope in her hands and then them.

This is happening. This is actually happening. When does Victoria become the type of person to carry a gun? When does she become the type of person to become comfortable with one and develop an expertise that almost seems lethal?

"Wait!" Sharon says, eyeing Victoria. "I know you went through terrible things…"

"What now, Sharon?"

Victoria looks at her annoyed just like her mother. Mirrored expression, really. She deadpans, "I hadn't noticed."

"You were never the kind of person to keep a gun in the house."

"I wasn't the kind of girl to kill my father with a lamp because he tried to rape me either."

"Sharon, I hate guns," Victoria states simply, after her mother. It's two of them against her. It's normal to her because it's always the girl from a poor crime-ridden area of Madison versus the women from the upper crust high society. A quarter of a century doesn't erase that divide, but it blurs it, makes Sharon stand in Nikki's shoes. Victoria continues as she contemplates how she is tied to these women through more than just children who are cousins, overlapping of marriage, divorces – every possible thing underneath a sun they are flying way too close to. "I loathe them, but I realized that I hated feeling JT's hands around my neck more. I hated realizing I hid my bruises, and then accepted his proposal. Then with every passing day, I loved him and wanted to kill him. I'd wake up and as he slept, figure out how I'd do it. I will never know what twisted JT so badly, it had to come to…that, but we can't go back. Just forward. This is bigger than us and we have to contain it now," and then a wry smile lands on her lips and it doesn't reach the eyes filled with steely resolve. "My kids and I will be safe. I learned archery in boarding school. A firearm is effortless for me. I'm a skilled shot, contrary to popular belief. Anything else?"

"Victoria, sweetheart, you don't have to do anything else today if you're up for it."

"I'm fine. I started with Tessa. I have to see it through."

"Alright. Let's get this over with. The quicker we do this, the quicker we can get answers," Sharon hears herself say, resolutely and becomes aware of the black bag and rope in her grasp and follows Victoria and Nikki out through the garage.

Before Sharon leaves the house, she glances around again.

She sees a fire poker, a new one. It gleams like the blade of a sword and the shadows that slink across Victoria's walls reappear and move as if they belong.

—

Sharon finally understands. Victoria. Nikki. Phyllis. They're all monsters and so is she.

As she slides in the back seat, Sharon sees the swing of the pendulum in her mind again. It's not powerful movement. It's gentle as if moved by wind and she's determined to make it still. Balance. Equilibrium.

She suppresses a shiver as she remembers. Sharon remembers as a young newlywed, back when the Newman name and power is intoxicating. She remembers being with her mother as she gasps for breath and playing the part of the frantic daughter. It's not really a part, in theory. Sharon remembers wondering if her paraplegic mother's wide eyes beg her for mercy, for one more day at life or if they thank her for ending the nightmare with one air bubble into her IV and to the heart. Then Doris Collins flatlines as doctors work to save her and that question hangs in the air as long the sound of the machines calling her mother's time of death. _Complications from corrective spinal surgery exacerbated by diabetes. Congestive heart failure_ , the autopsy says as her mom's cause of death.

At least her mom doesn't have to struggle anymore.

Sharon makes her mother is taken care of in death better than in life with the nicest casket money can bury and the freshest daisies to adorn it. She makes her mom's pain stop, and makes the suffering go away. It's the right thing. It's why Sharon loves social work. She loves meeting new people and seeing there is always the one person broken, but never beyond repair. There is always the one person carrying a little pain than the others. Sharon can stare into the eyes of one person and see they're a little haunted and wild as they look everywhere but her. She understands. Sometimes, Sharon hears the walls of the interrogation room breathe and sees them close in too.

It's the byproduct of trauma and individuals are more a product of their environment. She knows this of Tessa, witnesses it first hand when she puts herself on the line to rescue Crystal from a life that isn't one. Then again, Tessa Porter is a chameleon.

Sharon sits in the back of Victoria's car, windows slightly frosted.

Her thoughts are the same. Cold makes everything more vivid and saturates her every thought with clarity. They become sharper with what has to do, the purpose is. If Mariah refuses to see it and Sharon will do everything to make her daughter see it herself.

The car slows to a stop and both Victoria and Nikki turn around to look at her in the dark.

"Here," Nikki says, revealing a small silver tranquilizer gun retrieved from her purse. Sharon takes it. "There are two shots in there."

"Why two?"

"One to knock out Tessa, and another to get rid of any…obstacles."

"Oh… that's thorough."

Sharon's eyes move to scout the area before pocketing the tranquilizer gun discreetly in the side of her jeans. She makes the decision to leave the rope and bag behind. If the super can buy Victoria as Mariah's aunt, she can slip by as Mariah's mother, a mother who wants to see how her daughter is doing in her new apartment.

"Sharon," Victoria calls to her as she opens the door. "Thank you."

She nods in response and turns to look outside, a biting wind winding itself in between the tree branches stripped bare.

"I'll be back in five minutes. Maximum. Just get Tessa in here without any trouble."

Sharon closes the car door and takes purposeful steps of her own forward.

 _Save your daughter, Sharon_ , a disjointed voice demands in a rough whisper. _Save Mariah._


	2. Necessary Malevolence

**Welcome to the Panic Room  
show:** Young and the Restless  
 **central characters:** Sharon Collins, Phyllis Summers, Victoria Newman, Nikki Newman  
 **disclaimer:** Nothing is mine except the plot and creative license I take with it. All characters are the property of the CBS, Sony and the Bell family. Any characters not recognized are mine. Nothing done or written is for profit, just for entertainment.  
 **summary:** Sharon. Victoria. Nikki. Phyllis. They're all monsters. / Or, a Murder Coven anthology [AU, sort of]  
 **note:** I was just struck by inspiration after seven months. This is where things get really dark, really fast. This is the longest part because Victoria was the victim, and did not get the voice she should have. As someone who faced something horrendous, you don't see things the same. It colours for your whole life, and if you like your control, and routine like Victoria, and you lose it, it shakes something loose inside of you. This is basically what has happened to Victoria. The domestic abuse has shaken something in her so terribly, there's this repressed, darker part of her that has bubbled to the surface. Enjoy, as it unravels and the story continues.

* * *

 **Part II  
Victoria Newman  
"Necessary Malevolence"**

* * *

Yes, she's high strung. Absolutely.

She's guarded and emotionally repressed, and she doesn't have female friends. Sharon and Phyllis aren't exactly her friends and her mother is here because she acts on instinct. This is not a sisterhood. This is not a girl's club, or even a coven as much as people are sure she's a witch. She works alone because well, most days, it's what she is accustomed to. She does her job at Newman alone and maintains the façade that she's fine because it is. Everything's fine. She goes to work, comes home to her children and plays the part who Victoria is without the bruises, the panic attacks and the heavy mantle of shame with the residual anger that simmers beneath. The kids are with Billy tonight and want to spend a whole snow day with Reed in the morning so she allows it. Why not? Kids are so resilient, their goals so minimal compared to an adult. _Compartmentalization is a blessing_.

Nick teases that she keeps vampire hours lately, and though she knows it's only him wanting to check in, Victoria doesn't want it. She doesn't want the calls. She doesn't want the texts. She doesn't want her father to call her into his office unless it has to do with Newman. She doesn't want Billy to go into this habit of needing to slay some dragon for her when she's a princess that will rescue herself. She doesn't even want her mother dropping by, and having Aunt Casey call her. They mean well. Logically, she knows that. She's learning to fight smarter, not harder and sometimes, it means building a shell around her heart.

It's the reason she's driving in the dead of night, the temperatures subzero but oddly comfortable because it sharpens her. It's nature's reminder that while there are always stories and actions of human kindness, those are few and far between.

The world out here is barren, cold and unkind.

So are the people who reside in it.

It's unfortunate she's now one of many because, she thinks gazing into her rear view mirror to catch Sharon's pleading eyes and see Tessa's tear streaked face as she cries, sobs and pleads. Victoria's eyes meet Sharon's with a plea to just stop. _No._

"We're here," she declares, and puts the car in park. She turns around to meet Tessa. Just Tessa, not even Sharon. Not even her mother. "Enough!" she yells so loudly Tessa flinches and Sharon tells her to ease up. "We need you coherent. Answer the questions and we can all go. If you lie to me like you did at the apartment, that bear will be _nothing._ Do you understand me?"

Victoria catches Tessa look at her and barely nod. What a stark contrast from the self-assured girl who swears she doesn't scare easily. Sun Tzu writes in _The Art of War_ to find anyone's weakness and exploit it. Of course, she does some digging and there may be alleged research into the Porter family, based in Chicago. The smallest tug of guilt and common sense pulls at her somewhere in her mind. Tessa's father should not have children, much less be around them. The man sounds like a drug dealing leech – more of the harder side of the drug spectrum (according to many pages in her dossier: methamphetamine, with the occasional heroine) – and understands why the girl is forced to be scrappy, lie, cheat and steal. Her mother is an alcoholic nurse. Healer of others while damaging herself. It's all she knows.

However, the Newman narrative is built of three things: they're ruthless, they're built on money and power and sometimes, it ends terribly for some unfortunate person in the way. It's admirable. Well, in hindsight. Or, if Tessa and Crystal matter to her. But no, they're just means to many ends.

—

Victoria needs to remember that she has three children at home. It's on a continuous loop. It's enough to be efficient, concise and toss Tessa out of the car when it's all over.

Still, her fingers itch to be on the trigger.

—

Victoria can easily disclose that she knows Crystal isn't Crystal in a city of nearly 2.8 million people. She's just a girl lost in the different faces of diversity, under the height of the CN Tower. Crystal is living her life with a new name, new job that doesn't involve her selling pieces of herself to strange, unscrupulous men. But no, she'll keep that close to the vest for another time.

Natalie Braithwaite has a safe, normal life, works as a barista at a Starbucks on Yonge & King St. Victoria won't disrupt any of that. Partly because it's not useful to her at the moment and she knows what it feels like to disappear into foreign place where no one knows who she is, or doesn't really care.

—

"The bottom line is you know things."

She says, pointedly after her mother, "…things that can hurt a lot of people. Where is he?" she questions, suppressing the shudder that comes up. JT is Reed's father. Yes, he's monstrous and he's gone, but he's not a body. He's not a corpse in the state of far gone decomposition. A catch lands in Victoria's throat. He can't possibly be reduced to nothing but bones. "Where's JT's…body?"

"I told you! I don't know!"

"Is someone helping you helping you frame my husband?"

Tessa's eyes grow wide. " _What?_ Do I have a death wish? I wouldn't frame Victor for anything, Nikki!" she protests, and dissolves into pained sobs. "Look, Mariah's probably…going to leave me. I took that money from you to protect my sister, and because I was desperate. I swear, I'll work and pay you back every last dime… please…"

She smirks, amused. Victoria shouldn't be, but she is.

"That's something a guilty person would say."

"I swear, I don't—"

"Shut up!" her mother hisses. "I trusted you and reward my kindness by taking a gun out of my house. You lived with me, lived with Sharon, and then you hurt one of my grandsons so deeply, he's in another country while I let you mentor Reed!"

"I know—I know… I did, but I swear, I wouldn't…" Tessa cries, and turns to Sharon. "They won't believe me, Sharon. I don't know what they want."

"I want you to swear the blackmail was the last stunt you pulled. That's what I want."

Tessa's voice cracks and there's a realization in her eyes in the darkness of the car.

"Sharon, they're going to kill me," she says quietly, a kind of terror in her voice that strikes Victoria with a sense of familiarity. It hits her ear like the remnants of a song that's catchy enough to stay but not memorable enough to linger. But every so often, that song comes back and it triggers. "That's why you all brought me out here, right?" she continues, panicked on the brink of hyperventilation. "I'm going to die out here! Please, don't! I'm so sorry! It won't… Sharon, what do they want from me?"

Sharon sighs, "Okay," she orders, firmly. "Get out of the car."

Tessa moves to open the door, and Victoria makes a note to wipe down the door handle. Scratch that. It's better to give the car a thorough wash. It's been a while.

"Not you. _Them_."

Victoria and her mother share gazes of annoyance and then watches Tessa become child-like in her demeanour. She shrinks into herself as if protecting herself. Like if she's small enough she won't get hurt. That's when Victoria chooses to believe her.

This girl knows nothing else.

Tessa begs for Sharon not to leave, and Sharon assures she'll be back and to stay calm.

Victoria now understands that Tessa Porter doesn't scare easily.

She just scares enough to not be stupid going forward.

Tessa is all about self-preservation if nothing else. That's how Victoria secures her silence.

—

"Okay, she's been beat down enough. End this. I believe her."

Victoria clutches her car keys in her hands, two quick beeps locking the car. Her breaths come out in cold puffs as her boots crunch pebbles and fallen snow. The long, deep hoot of an owl punctuates the silence of a cold night, bound to get colder. She's tired. She's cold, and still there are loose ends that still linger and need to be dealt with right away. It can't be left until tomorrow.

"You're so gullible, it's pitiful."

"Says the woman who stays with a monster for years and calls it a grand love story," she snaps, and grows impassioned before her mother can snipe right back. Sharon wants to save the world, one person at a time when the woman can snap another's neck just as easily. It's a paradox to Victoria. Hurting and healing people at the same time for a sense of altruism when Victoria – with the help of therapy – can admit, she doesn't know what it's like to experience what true altruism is or what it's like to have that shape her motive. She lives in a world with watercolour paints of many vibrant colours when she finds comfort in the black, greys and smudges of charcoal drawings. "You grew up in an abusive home. You see the plight of several girls who dance at your club because it's all about empowerment, but you can't understand her?"

"What is there to understand?"

Victoria grows silent.

Aunt Casey tells her about that. Nick Reed is a womanizing alcoholic who rapes his daughters before one of them ends his life. Barbara Reed, who is a single mother, lives with a man who breaks her heart and raises two children by herself in a little shack on the edges of town. Victoria sees it once from her car and sketches the structure still standing, but the windows are opaque from dust. The metal hinges rust with time and the little structure is choked with overgrown grass, weeds and plants that seem to climb the house and choke it. Victoria burns it and never tells anyone. Not even her mother.

"Stop."

Nikki and Sharon look at each other, and then at her.

"I believe her," Victoria declares to her mother and Sharon. "She doesn't know anything."

Nikki softens but has questioning on her face. "I don't know," she argues. "What happens when she stops being fearful? She'll talk."

"Well, that's what Sharon is here for," Victoria says, before directly addressing the blonde. That familiar steel travels along her bloodstream, through veins and arteries before it coils itself like a python, waiting to strike. Then it did and Victoria hears the sharp yet distant roar of a rage that angers her enough to kill. She inhales to calm herself. "She trusts you. Make sure Tessa doesn't talk. She did all this to protect her sister. 20,000 dollars guaranteed her protection. Maybe 200,000 dollars would guarantee that protection suddenly wasn't there…"

"Are you _threatening_ Crystal?" Sharon scoffs.

"No, Sharon. Crystal is innocent."

"Collateral damage, you mean?"

Victoria shrugs, instantly coming to the conclusion that arguing is useless. It's done nothing thus far and is waste of energy. It doesn't matter the semantics. All that matter to her is that this gets handled her way. "I'm…offering Tessa the opportunity to continue keeping her sister safe. Do you still have her phone?"

"Yes."

"Good. Hold onto it."

Victoria doesn't catch the pride on her mother's face, or the horror on Sharon's as she turns on her heel and walk against the frigid cold, and unlocks her car.

—

"Do you believe me now?"

Sharon nods, "Yes…" she sounds, apologetic. "We just needed answers."

Victoria turns around in the driver's seat, and meets Tessa's eyes. "We just had to be sure. I believe you. You don't know anything. You had nothing to do with it."

There's a prick of guilt, and a shot of understanding and empathy.

She hears the howl of wind so sharply, it sounds like it originates from an elusive wolf. Then it's gone. If that howl does escape a wolf, she's envious and hates it. It has the privilege to be free in the wild and she's the princess. Victoria's a princess stuck within the brick walls of domestic abuse and family duty when she wants to watch it all burn, while reaching for her own sense of liberation. Whatever that is. There's always the possibility of jail but when her sanity is dwindling and her patience nearly paper thin, Victoria isn't scared of jail. She loathes the system far too deeply to experience fear. She stands on the edge of this legal cliff, the ground seemingly to falter around her. But she'll be strong and tough, even downright monstrous to keep herself together.

"Get out of the car."

Sharon looks at her horrified, "Victoria! No! She'll freeze out there! It's dark and cold. You can't possibly do this."

"Tessa's very resourceful," her mother sneers. "Isn't she?"

Victoria raises a brow and shoots a pointed glance at the young woman. "Do you really think it's wise for you to get a ride back into town with us? Think very hard."

"Do what you want… I don't care anymore," the girl relents, almost resigned. Tired.

Tessa moves to go and this time, no one stops her.

"Be safe…" Sharon says, as Tessa exits.

"Smart girl," Victoria mutters, hitting the button so the window slides down. Sharon tosses her phone outside, and Victoria hears it clatter at Tessa's feet. She restarts the car and drives away. Victoria's gloved hands grip the steering wheel a little tighter as she pulls away until Tessa Porter is not visible to her anymore.

There's a silence that grows in the space in her car and Sharon breaks it.

"You should be ashamed of yourselves."

Victoria uses her peripheral vision to catch her mother nonchalantly applying a coat on pink gloss. "What goes around comes around," her mother says, flippantly. "We let her off."

"She could have died," Sharon adds, guiltily. "She could _still_ die."

Victoria scans the road ahead as she makes a smooth exit off the freeway, merging into street traffic. As if the car is on a regular drive just like everyone else. As if she doesn't drive her mother and Sharon through the shadow of night to carry out one of the many plans of her own making.

Streetlights, headlights and red taillights dot her way like fireflies or many police cruiser lights without the sirens. Her thoughts are muddled, going from one sequence of events to the next. It flips from deep in her past to her present and what her future can be and who she's becoming. Other days, Victoria feels fragile and on others, she wakes up and feels hollow. Like she can cause all the destruction she can and not think of the consequences. There's a certain liberating quality about it. With liberation comes power, and Victoria is getting back after JT takes it away from her.

No, Victoria is taking it back, she corrects in her thoughts.

She almost smiles because of the small positives. At least the money she pays Dr. Mosley for a session is doing something even though she hates going to therapy, and exposing herself.

"Or, she could have felt nothing had I shot her tonight, Sharon."

She's completely joking.

 _Not really._ Nothing is a laughing matter.

—

He sits on the cot, twisting his wedding band around. Smooth in the middle and bumpy ridges on the edges that felt rough against his fingertips. Time is lost to him and so is the day. He doesn't understand what is happening. Grayson Merrick is the middle child of a middle-class family. Being the only male is a family of women is the only thing that guarantees his father's attention and his mother's devotion. He doesn't live in the rich bubble of Genoa City, doesn't experience the glittering life of the obscenely rich and famous. Two older sisters and two baby sisters behind him. His dad is protective of them and her mother pours a little love into them.

Grayson isn't frustrated by it, but he works a little harder than his sisters. He likes architecture, taking broken things and building something new. Architecture and real estate follow him into college until he cracks the bubble as his sister leave home, start careers or become homemakers themselves. Grayson climbs a little higher with every project he oversees, every negotiation he leads for an even bigger deal. Yet it's over shadowed by the birth of another child for Izzy, a Teacher of Year Award for Ophelia, another award for her work with environmentalism for Maryanne and a wedding for his closest sister, Amy, soon after beginning her career as veterinarian in London because well, her husband is English.

He's a _fucking nice bloke_. Of course.

Yet his marriage of five years to Rosie loses its spark, turning into something mundane no matter how much he loves her.

They both work at Newman, separate departments.

Rosie doesn't think it's a good idea but he thinks it does. They'll be together, go for lunch dates, get to how they are when they're dating. It's the right thing for both of them and their relationship. Isn't that what she wants? Why is she opposed to this? She vows not to leave him and here she is wanting to be separate from him. It's a good opportunity for his career and she can put in a good word for him with Victor and Victoria Newman, because she's head of their Public Relation Department with a quiet sixth sense in real estate from discovering the most valuable spaces for the best price to the eye of an interior designer. Why can't she see his side? She never sees his side anymore. It's frustrating and just like every other woman in his life who seems to pass him by. Even Amy.

He doesn't know how or what happens, but Molly calling for her upstairs and Rosie staring at him with wide, tear filled eyes snaps him out of it.

"Thank you for letting go," she says, sarcastically, while rubbing her wrist. "Not like you were hurting me or anything. Who the fuck _are_ you these days? Where did my husband go?"

Grayson rebuts, panic slowly a vice all over him. Something's start to crack, like fault lines in a hard earth.

She quietly sniffles and calls upstairs. "Mommy's coming!"

"Rosie, wait, I'm sorry. Can we talk about—"

"No!" she snaps, with a restrained anger in usually warm brown eyes. It carries a loving gaze and her lips have a smile just for him. Now, she looks disgusted. "Leave me alone. You're a mess, Grayson. I'm working from home today. We both need the space."

Grayson exhales, bringing his memory to the present. Right now. He knows he's on a week-long trip in Milwaukee for Dark Horse, surveying a new building for commercial development. Nick wants to build this property with stores that will spin new jobs for the most vulnerable, or the opportunity to grow the businesses for the wealthy. It's a good idea. Just good, but it's up to what Arturo and Nick want to do with it ultimately.

Grayson stands wincing from an ache in his lower back from laying in this cot for so long and counting the ceiling squares. He rakes a hand through his dishevelled dark hair, and rubs his face. It's become scratchy with stubble. Bright fluorescent lights shine down on this place and he squints against it, shielding his eyes against it. He probably has a five o'clock shadow. Green eyes count again, but a silver bar in the middle of the ceiling. There's a small wooden desk with a simply built, yet sturdy chair.

"Okay," he theorizes, crease in his brow. "Maybe," he picks up that chair, opting to lift it directly underneath that bar affixed to the high ceiling, "if I jiggle that bar, I can remove it, and get out of here…"

Grayson knows he's the victim of a kidnapping. He also knows that his kidnappers are reasonable, calculating or both. They feed him at odd times to keep him alive because clearly they need him. For that, he has to be grateful in some twisted way. Grayson grits his teeth against the shooting pain that originates in his lower back and shoots up the column of his spine to the base of his neck and climbs on the seat of the chair. He can still draw himself up to full height and he won't have a grasp on it, but if one of these tiles are loose, he can escape and make sense of this. Or, at least go to a competent police officer before the money, and Newman prestige colours an already messed up system. Or, he escapes and says nothing.

Grayson just needs to get back to Rosie and Molly and fix it what it's steadily breaks for a long time before it's too late. A house in foreclosure isn't trivial, but a house that loses the purpose of being a home is scary to him. Rosie gets a promotion at Newman that still has their incomes relatively in the same tax bracket, but with her income a little bigger than his. Rosie gets the executive office and a benefit package that eclipses his.

When she saves the house from foreclosure by negotiating where he fails, Grayson can't help but feel as overshadowed as he does as a child. Rosie is the one who secures the house he is supposed to be the provider for, and he finds himself seething when he doesn't intend to. Then he remembers the explosion. He erupts and so does she. He argues. She calls his alpha male behaviour stupid. She gets more money than him and he's punishing her for it. _So, what if I am? You fucked up when you couldn't even give me the boy I wanted._

Rosie takes her platinum wedding set off and calmly says he won't have a wife and child either before throwing the jewelry at him. When he grabs her again to prevent her from leaving and taking the daughter he loves – Molly is his whole heart, he swears – Rosie breaks free from his grasp and declares her intention to sleep in the guest room tonight.

After she stays at Newman and he moves to Dark Horse with Nick, he lives in a condo across town he hasn't had kid proofed or settled into himself because he's hoping to go home. It's just a living space with a decent view. Rosie stays in the house they buy together but keeps with _her_ money. Right. It's just another reminder that he doesn't quite measure up.

His stomach growls again. He doesn't know the time. Grayson just figures out how to get the bar to move within the bond of the screws to the ceiling when the sharp ache becomes a sharp pain until it paralyzes his legs and all the feeling is drained from them. He loses his grip, yells out as the unknown terror in his body becomes intense and unbearable. He falls to the hard ground, the wind seemingly knocked out of his body.

"Shit."

Grayson's heart thrums against his ribcage, his lungs burn and he instinctively sucks the air back into them. His green eyes go from 20/20 vision to double vision and then corrects itself. It's not a bar, but a pipe that runs across the ceiling to another place in this building. Maybe it's a maze, and he lies in the center. Grayson's favourite smell in the whole world is grass after it rains or after it's cut. The second is tied between Molly's bubble gum shampoo and Rosie's _Beyond Paradise_ perfume that leaves her leaving smelling of honeysuckle. It's her smell since they lock eyes from across the room at a college party years ago.

The only smile that assaults his senses now that he's here for a prolonged period of time, he only smells mould, fading hope, regret, and the cold realization that he will die here.

Grayson Merrick will die here without his parents, his sisters, his wife and the opportunity to fix with her so he can watch his daughter grow up.

Then as if from heaven, he looks up and sees a face. He recognizes it, and opens his mouth to cry out, wills his body to move. Grayson remembers her. Of course, he does. Who can forget? And those eyes. A glacial blue that sends a biting coldness to the marrow of his bones. His throat feels like sandpaper and razor blades and he's so damn hot. His mind can't question where she comes from because either he's going insane or she is what they say. Grayson can't tell what he has control of and what he doesn't.

His eyes follow her gaze as hers rake over him with impersonal assessment.

"Victoria…"

Her red lips pull into a smile, as she acknowledges him.

"Hi, Grayson. It's nice to see you again."

—

She crouches to his level and gives him a cordial smile. He sees those in the halls of Newman, and again when they shake hands, during his departure from there. _It just seems like a better fit for me,_ Grayson recounts explaining.

 _I understand completely and I know my brother will take full advantage of the talents I know you've demonstrated here,_ she replies, sipping on her mug of coffee. _There are no hard feelings, Grayson._

That one scene imprints in his mind so clearly.

"Victoria…?" Grayson says, his voice barely above a whisper now. "What are you… Dark Horse… "

"I'm glad I found you," Victoria replies, getting up and walking slowly to sit on the chair he just falls off of. She sits there calmly with crossed legs. "Actually, no," she corrects after a moment's pause and a light chuckle. "I'm glad it had to be this way, but I'm sorry this was so short notice. I mean, I knew you and Rosie were going through a hard time right now. She confides in me and I'm honoured she trusts me. So," she explains like the breakdown of the quarterly report from start to finish, "I merely had eyes on you as you did your work for Dark Horse. Rosie needed space from you, and well, so did you. You know, to sort things out before the holidays. Molly is fine. She's aware her daddy is away and loves her. I had a short window of time. Those big hulking figures out here are loyal to nobody but themselves unless I throw whatever vice they're craving their way. Then they're loyal to me forever. Not my father, not my brother. _Me_. What's your vice, Grayson? Everyone," she speaks quietly, with a dimension of cruelty in her voice as she gently touches his face with a leather gloved hand and then takes it away, "…and I mean, everyone has one."

For the first time ever, rage erupts from Grayson just as more powerful spasms in his abdomen force him to the floor.

"Rosie… damnit…" he groans and then sets a bleary yet angry gaze of his own in Victoria's direction. "I'm getting to my family, Victoria! That's my vice!" he growls and she's unfazed. "Let me go to them and I'll forget this ever happened," he tries negotiating. She'll listen to negotiating even in a hostage situation. "We're both parents. You have kids, a family, so do I. Katie and Molly are friends. I…don't mean anything to you. I'm useless… I don't fit in whatever big picture…you have – ah! Damnit!" Another spasm, more painful than the last. It steals his breath, stops his heart, nearly carves the lungs out of his body and yet he's screaming. How is that possible? "Victoria… please…" he sobs, like the little bitch his dad calls him for letting his house go into foreclosure, or being stagnant in a job that appreciates him enough when it's more someone else's benefit. "My vice…is my wife and daughter. Please… I know you well enough to know that you want independence away from your dad. You want to run Newman your own way. Please… let me go live my life and fix it. Let me go," Grayson nearly begs, "and you'll have _my_ loyalty."

Grayson watches her stand up, pace the room as he uses whatever strength he has left to pull himself up on the cot. His arms burn and tremble. Victoria looks thoughtful, her face pensive. Her steps cause her heeled boots to create low clack-click steps, but it feels like being hit in the face with a tire iron repeatedly.

"Okay," she nods. "You make a compelling case."

"I… have?"

"Yes. I'll let you go."

Grayson is too busy letting the relief wash over him to see Victoria position the wooden chair back underneath the pipe he thinks is his ticket to freedom. He plans everything he will say to Rosie, and all the ways he will hold his baby girl and never let her go. A son is what he wants but it's a daughter that holds his heart in her little hands. That's enough.

"Thank you…" he breathes out to whatever is up there. "Thank you… Thank you…"

"It's my pleasure. I'm happy to do it."

Grayson doesn't see Victoria rap on the door with her knuckles in a distinct pattern with its own meaning, like a twisted kind of Morse code. He rests his head against the wall and takes him this moment of peace.

He's too wrapped up in gratitude and swearing his allegiance to the beautiful woman with the face of an angel. Grayson Merrick is smart, and sharp. He always plans and is a hard man to fool but there's no ulterior motive when he's desperate. Just survival. He's not aware of Victoria pulling a tall vial of a water like substance out of her pocket and offering it to him.

"What…is it?"

"The antidote to the poison I had them give you to subdue you. It'll counteract how you're feeling and make you clear enough to go home. Rosie and Molly must miss you."

Grayson takes it, pops the top off and throws his head back downing it before handing back to her. She caps it, and puts back in its previous place within her coat. It's cool and soothing and already, the fog clears. He feels better more energetic. He rubs at his lower back, and moves his legs. Oh, God. He can marathon the Genoa City marathon three times, go hiking up his favourite trail and still not be tired. Green eyes meet observant blue eyes. She smiles, and it reaches them.

"Oh, good. You've got some colour in your face back."

Grayson rubs at his face, the stubble scratching against his palm. "Damn, I'm going to need a shave."

"No," Victoria shakes her head, and blushes. Oh, he makes the Newman Ice Queen blush. She tucks a lock of her hair behind her ear, and looks back at him sheepishly. "You're a married man. Rosie is a very lucky woman. But I want to remember you, Grayson. I can do that if there's a bit of a shadow on your face. It highlights the your already prominent jawline. I'm… intrigued by the symmetry of your face."

"Oh."

Victoria Newman is quite striking herself. But he's a married man and he's her hostage.

"Yeah. I'm sorry. I have this art habit that makes me want to stare at people's faces. Like, I'm painting them in my mind and I've painted yours."

"Why?"

Something suddenly stops being right again and he—

The door bursts open and his thoughts are halted as two muscular men burst him and they grab him roughly. He can't fight them off. Grayson can't stop them and see where one guy stops and the other begins. He's yelling again and resisting as they force what feels like a hangman's noose around his neck, lift him to the chair and tie the other end to the bar with a succession of knots he can't untie. His Boy Scout training prepares him for everything but this.

"No! No… NO! No! Victoria, we had a deal! We had a fucking deal!"

A peel of laughter exits her lips and those eyes are a double void. He'll drown today and never come up to the surface again, they tell her.

She takes slow predatory steps to the chair he's so precariously balanced on.

"I said you made a great case. Some points aligned with mine and I agreed to let you go. You thought walking out of here was what I meant," she clicks her tongue in feigned disappointment. "I thought someone smart as you would get semantics. Then you make one of the biggest mistakes in negotiations. Never leave someone with more mistrust than they had going in."

"You don't trust me? You don't _know_ me!"

He has nothing to lose now. So, he may as well. He's delirious and his head is swimming, the currents strong and tides going in and out in an erratic pace. Grayson isn't a religious man. He lets go of that somewhere between the end of junior high and the beginning of freshman senior in high school. His mother, April, is Baptist to the letter and is worried about his soul. Well, the stuff afterward death. Right now, he's about to die an archaic death by the hand of a woman much smaller than him.

It's as they say and he understands it now.

Victoria Newman is the monster that will seal his fate.

"I know your type. You're an abuser. Rosie's never going to have to cover another bruise up or stare into her compact, wondering when a bruise you gave her will fade away. She's never, ever going to feel the way you shame her for her accomplishments because of your failures. I know about the anti-depressants, the feelings of inadequacy, that damn fragile male ego because god forbid Rosie find her own happiness within herself, you controlling bastard!" Victoria yells, going from graceful to feral slightly.

"She…loves me…" he squeaks out quietly, his legs suddenly about to go out.

His heart feels like it's jumping around from his thoracic cavity to somewhere in his abdomen only to shoot back up to his head. The bile churns in Grayson's stomach churns and it feels acidic.

"No, you don't. You don't know what _love_ is. People like you hurt. They destroy," she places her foot on the edge of the chair, positioned to kick it over. She won't look at him, doesn't do it once since remembering him. Grayson muses with a maudlin, wan kind of humor. The queen is hanging the lowly peasant because that's the hierarchy, a medieval status of old because of the power dynamic, new because his executioner is a woman. "They destroy until there's nothing left. But," she sighs, looking at him with a look of appraisal and resolution. A flicker of humanity crosses her face and then it's gone, "Rosie won't be another casualty of violence and Molly will be protected. That beautiful girl will be taken care of. Kids are resilient."

Grayson's vision gets misty, and then wet with tears he can't hold in anymore.

A dam breaks.

Victoria reaches into the back of her coat and pulls a black semi-automatic with a silencer screwed on the end, examines it with a sharp, decisive eye and then puts it back.

She stands in front of him, her gaze locked on him. Her voice is cold and formal.

The goons are there. He's just seeing them now.

"Do you have any last words?"

"Let…me…go."

"Okay. It's been a pleasure."

A sudden force of gravity forces him downward. Grayson can't see, hear, or feel as a strong wind leaves him twisting around. He's being held downwards and being left to be adrift all at once. He hears Rosie's voice soft yet unintelligible. Molly's smile is a spark that bursts into a firework against the backdrop of a dark starless sky. And then it's gone.

It's dark now and Grayson Merrick never finds light again.

At least, there's something he is good at – holding his breath the longest beneath the surface before he lets go because he has no choice.

—

"Last time, we talked about safe spaces."

"Yes, we did."

Dr. Mosley sits on the chair across from Victoria's usual space on the seat for two people. Nobody comes with her to therapy, and for that, she's glad. Usually, therapy means she can be as honest as she will allow herself. She's not feeling very forthcoming these days. It's more about the release of feelings she doesn't understand and new habits that scare and intrigue her. The handful of times she sits in a circle with other people who survive something as horrific as she is doesn't make her think she can overcome. It just makes her feel more out of sorts. With the decent donuts and horrendous coffee, Victoria only feels the chasms inside of her become bigger and her anger steadily build to fill the spaces between and crowd the rational part of her.

Her sense of her safety didn't come from a place but from her capabilities. She glances up at the plainly framed clock as the minutes tick away. She's not here for anti-depressants, doesn't want another prescription of sleeping pills and Victoria will flush the next batch of Lorazepam down the toilet.

She needs clarity to understand this new dimension to her emotional repertoire. Victoria is a daughter, a mother, a sister, a niece, a powerful businesswoman and maybe someone's friend. Maybe. She can be an ally but those are tenuous and the word friend in relation to Victoria is…complex. But then there's this barren tundra of white, a chill that leaves her numb and a husk of who she is. Those are the days she _wants_ to feel.

"But, Dr. Mosley, I'm coming to understand that my safety place isn't just a building. It's more…" she pauses, searching for the right word, something congruent although nothing quite matches up. "… more of a state of mind. Some days, I wake up like me and all the roles that shape who I am. Other days," she confesses, honestly for the last time. "I feel numb and I want so badly to feel anything. Even with JT's missing, I don't feel the sense of hypervigilance anymore."

"How do you feel?"

Victoria inhales, a flash of a golden letter opener on her desk clear in front of the desk. Sunlight peeks out through the slats of her blinds and glints along the blade. She can see her hands pick up the letter opener, her index finger and the sting to the middle of that finger. The pain flares up like the quick tip of an arrow release from a tight bow. Blood wells to the surface of such a tiny cut but here she is, feeling. It's an ache with its own pulse and its own breath. She's not as damaged as JT makes her think she is. It's a small moment of emotion trickling in but she has to get back to work and put this moment away in another secret box. There's no rest for the ruthless and the corporate world waits for no one.

It certainly won't for a woman.

"Victoria?"

She snaps back to her present, discreetly enough for the therapist to not know she is gone in the first place.

"I feel like I need to physically be in a place where I could be safe with myself."

Dr. Mosley creases a brow and stops writing, pen stopping its smooth movements.

"And where is that place for you?"

Victoria lets herself drift, recalling the ivory exterior. Inside lies the sixteen chapels and the tombs and cenotaphs that carried the remains of the dead. She conjures up the gothic architecture even as it evolves over many centuries. The most exquisite art lines the church walls in suspended animation but they seem to come to life before her eyes. She recalls the goosebumps on her skin seeing the monument dedicated to Florence Nightingale, is the resting place of geniuses like Galileo and Michelangelo and being within the walls of Machiavelli's tomb. What a paradox.

"The _Basilica di Croce in Florence_. That's my safe place."

If she can't get to Italy, then it's the local gun range. Or, the gym where she's into kickboxing with Sharon these days, running by herself with Love Is A Battlefield in her earbuds and the advanced yoga to be alone.

It's the only thing she says without any half-truth in it.

If she has to admit whatever truth is there, Victoria would have to come to the conclusion that she needs another way to cope. Her mother is an alcoholic and addiction doesn't have to be hereditary. Her need for control and stability with pills as a factor will be addictive. Victoria sits on this therapist's couch, going through the motions but realizing that _dabbling_ in self-harm is as far as it will go. Technically, she doesn't consciously harm on her. Cutting her finger on that letter opener isn't even intentional on her part.

This itch that's only relieved harming the source of her anger is a new dimension.

It's uncharted territory, but she'll figure it out like every other ruler that advances because there's the blood of another on their hands. Victoria is ready for that because she's not ready for an alternative that includes a white room with padded walls.

—

Jared Gilmore is a blue collared worker with a wife and young son. Johnny and his son, Aiden, hang around the same grade school circles. His wife, McKenna, is more animated. She's bubbly and her dirty blonde hair seems to carry rays of sunshine. She's a svelte woman in stature, and vibrant as a neon sign. When the boys have a playdate, McKenna greets her with a warm hug always. McKenna Gilmore is usually Professor Gilmore, but the woman is so easygoing. Victoria starts to think McKenna is a single mother juggling work and the task of raising a child until, feeling the weight of her anxiety after discovering another one of JT's damn bugs, she drives to another bar who people who are there in passing, or stay until closing.

Victoria remembers stumbling in one night. The floors aren't sticky. No pool table. No 1950s jukebox or a bartender that wants to talk to her or feel the need to query where her sadness and anger originates. Isn't it apparent and branded on her flesh by now? She sits on a stool where she goes to ask for white wine but changes her request three times before a tall, heavy set figure with shoulder length russet coloured hair slides into the stool next to her. His work boots seem grounded to the floor. She catches his chiseled jaw from his profile in the dim, shadowed lights of the bar's haunted atmosphere. He meets her with deep-set moss green eyes and she felt a jolt of memory.

"Hey, Mick," he nods to the bartender, who nods back in muted greeting. His voice is a baritone, a soft one. The way a volcano stays silent within the layers of the earth before it erupts. "Just beer tonight for me," he nods at her. "Get the lady a strong Pinot Noir."

"Oh…uh, you… didn't have to."

The man offers her a half-smile and she sees those green eyes again. Victoria remembers now. McKenna's son has her freckles, but carry these same facial features and his quiet disposition to compliment Johnny's silliness and social butterfly ways after the initial shyness of a typical child. Of course. Victoria now knows who he is. Aiden's father. She recalls an oak like figure that drops Aiden off at school in a dark construction truck. While she hugs Johnny and presses kisses on his face before he goes into his class, she watches him kneel to his son's level, gently ruffle the boy's hair and with a special handshake with a goodbye. _Take care of your mom for me and be a good boy. I love you, kid._

His chuckling is a deep rumble. "Yeah, I did. Aiden's a really shy kid. I don't mind that because that's just his way. Then one day he tells me about his buddy, Johnny, who makes him not scared to make friends anymore because Johnny's his best one. My kid told me kids aren't mean to him anymore because Johnny got the bullies to stop before McKenna and I could ever intervene. He wasn't shy because that was just his personality. My boy was shy because he was being bullied. I work hard, y'know… the school tuition is a lot, but I pay good money so my kid can have the best," he explains, and a feeling of love and pride for her son clenches her heart. She tears up and wipe it away when Mick places her red wine in front of her. "So, yeah… I was gonna buy that kid's mother a drink and you really look like you wanna punch someone."

Victoria hides the urge to cringe, politely thanks him for the wine. But yes, he's perceptive to pick on that. She glances at his ring finger. It's naked. She's not looking to hit on him. No, she's not looking to hook up with anyone in this bar. She does it once, and it's a beautiful time in her life, but it's not like that. It's just curiosity. People have different connotations of what marriage means, how they want to approach it. She understands that and doesn't see another one of those in her future. She's sure of that. Marriage is a waste of time and there's always so many promises of forever and _'till death do us part_ that don't make it to forever or the the end of life.

"You know, I owe you an apology."

He takes a pull of his beer and sets his down.

She blushes, pink colouring her cheeks. "Oh. You're Jared. Aiden's dad. McKenna talks about you a lot, but I was having trouble putting a face to the name. I usually don't have trouble with faces," she admits, hand absentmindedly around her wine glass. "I assumed that McKenna was a single mother."

"Because I'm not seen that often, and tend to travel for work a lot?" he supplies. He turns to look at her with no offence in his face. He merely shrugs. "Eh, it happens. I usually don't wear my wedding band because I work with my hands. Wouldn't wanna lose my ring."

"Ah. How practical."

"Nah. Not about practicality. Happy wife, happy life. I, at least, want her happy if nothin' else," Jared smiles at her, genuinely. "Life isn't always happy in general, or who the hell would come here to drink their heavy shit away?"

Victoria gets why this place is called The Graveyard.

How…appropriate.

She chuckles morosely, tucking a lock of her brown hair behind her ear.

"Never thought of it like that."

The advantage of finding _this_ bar as a refuge is that Jared Gilmore is a man she gets to know. There are no expectations between them. His bluntness is refreshing, the company is nice and it turns out it's the best thing to ever happen to her since that night in April.

—

"Thank you for helping me with this."

He's more stoic than usual. "Don't thank me. Just get home to your kids."

"I will," Victoria affirms, feeling cold and completion in the air around her. Maybe even the swing of a scythe by her ear since it seems to hum tonight. She stares up into Jared's face, his features hardened and eyes haunted. "As soon as you're done here, get home to your wife and son. Please. I…shouldn't have asked you in the first place—"

"Stop it, _Newman_. I came. I need to do this."

Newman. He never calls her by her first name anymore. It makes Victoria smile. Now, she has a friend, an actual ally that has nothing to gain by betraying her and doesn't know her in a way that will hurt her that deeply. She appreciates that he floats in and out of his life, while living it at the same time. Somehow, there's a space inside of her. A hole where it's a small piece of a jigsaw puzzle, she is still trying to understand what the completed picture of herself means. It could be that Victoria does indeed understand and doesn't want to face it lest she stumble and fall into a bottomless pit she'll be so comfortable in, it's no use climbing out.

"Why?"

"Simple. People like us, who've been hurt, got demons we have exorcise. Violence for people like him," Jared jerks his head toward the direction of where Grayson Merrick's body is, "is like meth for us. Don't want to touch that shit at first but then you do, then feel numb while you start to heal. There's all the scar tissue, fractures and bruises…"

"…but you still heal while wrapped up in the rush?"

"Exactly. It's not wrong to kill somebody. Not even wrong to act on it because it's just a release of what's always been there, but you just killed a man and to be honest with you, I'm going to chop up into little pieces. Dissect him until he's gone and those cops can't find him because there's nothing to find. I'll get home. Watch Aidan sleep and then slip into bed and make love to my wife."

Even now, after leaving a frightened woman on the side of a cold road, Victoria can't feel anything. She orders the kidnapping of a man who does nothing directly to her. The man only abuses his wife, has a fragile sense of masculinity and seems to negotiate quite poorly. But the endgame is always the same for her. Grayson's eyes pleading as he gasps and coughs for breath until a tightening hangman's noose – she ties it herself after careful, covert practice. Grayson Merrick is a colourful painting that drains of colour and is one of greys and blacks, suspended in air.

She paints a picture of mindless men that do her bidding for shade and colour, but in reality, Victoria has her own crew – she's still not used to that word in her vocabulary, just like Phyllis' musical playlist is a…choice – who have motives and are people with their free will intact. Unlike her father, Victoria doesn't blackmail or threaten what they love most. She doesn't issue subtle threats that assure loyalty. Victoria doesn't need friends here. Not like this. Not in this environment where she's teetering along a blade's edge.

Victoria's eyes dart around and she glances in the direction of her car. She parks it a few blocks away, and leaves it alone and locked. The directions are imprinted in her mind, and her memory takes in the image in the walk up here.

Everyone has a price when engaging in things like this, and it's not always monetary. Money helps, but it's not always the end goal for some. Not for this one. It's never been for him and she knows by now, not to insult him but paying him. But it's close to the holidays and she has something to give him.

He'll appreciate the simplicity.

"Here. It's the holidays," Victoria hands him a piece of paper. "You're the one person who didn't know me and made me feel sane."

"Did what I just said go over your head? I'm not here for a present, Victoria."

"No," she says, with a brilliant grin. She rolls her eyes, takes her gift, presses it in his bigger gloved palm. "You're going to go see your parents in Appleton and meet your new niece, and then… you're going to tell that developer that your family's farm isn't in play anymore. You're getting one."

Jared sighs, unfurling the cheque and for a man who isn't shocked by much, he is stunned.

His thick eyebrows shoot up and the shock glints in his eyes.

"Holy shit," he breathes out. He holds the cheque back out to her and Jared's back to being stoic as usual. And people call her predictable, "No," he replies, that one word like a small thunderclap before the downpour. "Absolutely the hell not."

She glares at this man and stares up into his face as he towers over again.

"You're welcome, _Gilmore_ ," she replies. "You love your family and it's for Aiden when you pass it down to him. You want to save your parents from worrying and give them the peace of living out their golden years where they raised you and your siblings," she smirks, playing swatting his broad shoulder. "You're grateful and thankful and I tell you, it's no problem at all—"

"Okay, okay," Jared relents, amused. "You're wild, man."

"No one can say Victoria Newman is predictable anymore," she shrugs and then rubs her arm against the frosty air a cold night with dropping temperatures. "They can say I killed a man, and became his judge, jury and executioner."

Jared places a hand on a shoulder, eyes searching her face.

"Can you live with it?" It's a question, a code, a phrase in a building language only they know how to speak. It's nice, Victoria thinks, to have that connection with somebody and not have it end with sex that would mean something and nothing to both her and Jared all at once. Victoria pauses. Can she live with terrifying Tessa? Can she live with the forbidden satisfaction of hearing Grayson be buoyed by hope before she rips it to pieces? Can she live with watching the last bit of human life drained away?

Can she live with this growing need to destroy, harm and kill again when so many pieces of herself die bit by bit? _Life is big and vast like the sky, darling_ , her mom always says with her signature vodka martini in hand. Not for life lessons or even triumphing over adversity even though that's critical. It's more about the nightmares that punctuate the good moments in between. Like black holes that expand and swallow up the stars.

She tells Johnny and Katie to face the monsters that lurks underneath their beds, tells them that there's no shadows with glowing eyes and palpable menace and that they are always safe. Victoria is more frank with Reed. The world has a lot of positives to offer, maybe even everything it has at his feet. It's all seductive, all powerful and completely intoxicating. It may make you so high, you don't even perceive that they can be a sudden drop. Or, the world can kick you down so low, it has on your knees and you have no idea how the strong end up being so weak. There's resentment she has toward JT for making her fight to be with her son and experience all of these shining moments in his life.

She can only hope Reed makes better choices than she does. Even though, he crashes and burns with every ounce of her being screaming to reprimand him, she can only pray he doesn't because the love she has for her son matters more than any mistake of his – real or imagined. It's this well of love that overflows that makes who she is in this current snapshot in time.

It's this love Victoria has for Reed – before she knows he ever exists, and she sees the flickering of his heartbeat on an ultrasound monitor and hears it, steady and quick between the beats of her own heart – that makes it easy to keep the image of his father intact, instead of something twisted and monstrous.

Then again, Victoria has blood on her hands. It's warmer than the gloves she wears.

She's a monster too.

—

Victoria sets her face with determination, her eyes resolute.

Her answer to Jared's question always still the same, and she doesn't see it changing.

"Everything was necessary," Victoria answers. "Yes, I can live with it."

Jared surveys her the length of a heartbeat, and nods as if he makes a decision of his own.

"See you around, Newman. Me and my guys will take it from here."

"Goodnight."

He turns and walks away, his form seeming to melt into the dark until he's gone.

Victoria heads in her own direction. There's an irony in that, Victoria muses with a light smile on her lips. Lots of people telling her how she should feel, how they feel, what to do, what they want to do for her, and what the next steps are when she's literally on a road in rural Kenosha county, beating a cold, snowy path home. She glances up, the sky a velvet black and the clouds that hide a yellow crescent of a moon, its thinness reminding her a broken fingernail. But it's not a fingernail that breaks clean and can be repaired with a manicure. It's a nail that breaks and takes some of the skin with it, causing a hangnail.

Thus, the battle arises. Is it safer to take the nail off around the skin for minimal pain, is it safer to just pull at this damaged nail and take the skin with it, even though there will always be pain and blood that wells to the surface? Her eyes scan in front of her, around her, and at some points, behind her. She knows this area because there's a blue trash bin on the left, a small wooden cabin that leans over to the left with broken glass left as the window. The smell of pine assaults her senses, sharp and cleansing. A pile of pine cones are spread around the base of a tree.

She catches the glint of a silver door handle before her silver SUV comes into view. Still, the question nags her as Victoria is forced to answer it, just feet from her vehicle.

A rustle from her left toward the woods reflexively makes her reach behind her into the folds of her winter coat for the semiautomatic that remains unfired all night.

She's expecting a small animal, even a deer. If it's an axe murderer, she's running them over with her vehicle immediately and really claiming self-defense. Hours of practice at the gun range don't have her hands trembling as she quickly checks the loaded magazine, and shoves back up with the heel of her hand. Victoria will block out the whirring noise her mind typically makes when sorting out every possibility with the muffled sound of a bullet leaving the barrel.

But no, it's a person. A perfect complete stranger.

A girl with dark curly hair that frames her face stumbles over. Her hair has leaves and twigs entangled in them and she breathes like she runs a marathon. Maybe, Victoria thinks, taking in the breaths that come out in puffs of condensation, the red cuts on her knuckles that scream against her light mocha skin and how hard she shakes, it's not a stretch. The girl looks twenty one at least. She puts her hands up in surrender, fear in her dark brown eyes. A golden locket hangs around her neck. All she has against the cold is a sweatshirt, neon green legging and old sneakers.

"P—Please don't shoot me…" she says, with a stammer, tearfully. "I… just need to go."

"Go?" Victoria asks, keeping her gun trained on her. Logically, she's innocent. Like every other underprivileged young woman her mother funds through her many charitable causes or employs at The Bayou. "I won't shoot, but I'm a woman alone in the woods. You get that, right?"

"Yes. Fuck, I'm so cold…" she sniffles. "I just wanted—"

"You're jumping ahead. I'll be fair. I lower this gun, and you lower hands. But remember, that I don't trust you and will shoot you if my gut tells me to. Is that understood?"

"Okay…"

Victoria's weapon and the girl's hands are dropped at the same time.

"Let's start with your name and where you're from."

"Irene. I'm 21. Been in Wisconsin my whole life, and want to get out."

"Why?" she questions, like a police interrogator even though she hates the police.

Irene bites her bottom lip in thought, eyes filling up with tears. Her eyes flick over to the direction she came from. Victoria can see flicks of amber in them like a kaleidoscope around the pupil. "I live in this little cabin house with my mom and baby sister over the woods. My dad left because of her post-partum. She can't abuse Evangeline. My sister, but she takes it out on me. I couldn't take it anymore so we fought… it got physical. That's where I got these cuts on my hands," she wraps her arms around herself, as to protect herself from the blows. Victoria catches the dark outline of a bruise on Irene's wrist and remembers the necklace of purple and black bruises JT gives her. She's angry and fearful for her life that day but a small part of her, vows to kill him.

"Where'd you get that bruise on your wrist?"

"I broke it when I had to climb out of the window. I don't have health insurance so I never reported it. It never healed the right way so it still hurts when I move it."

"Sorry about that."

Victoria isn't. She's not exhibiting a lack of empathy. Abuse is terrible. It's just she's hit her quota for feeling an array of emotions. She experiences the highs, the low and the nothingness in between. That's when she's rational, practical and she feels at her most clear.

"I just ran out. I have nothing. It's…freezing. I just need a ride. That's all."

Victoria studies this girl. There's something in her eyes that is true, but there's something she learns at her father's knee. Listen to the other side of a negotiation. Pay attention to the terms and even wait when there is an impasse. If the other offers too soft of a cushion around their terms, the other side is clearly waiting for a bend, leeway, and just the tiniest relief of pressure. Find the other side's weaknesses. Exploit it and forge it into a weapon to strike. Irene huddles, and moves from side-to-side against the weather. She sniffles and wipes her nose on her nose, discreetly. A look of annoyance flitters across Irene's face as snowflake fall over the sky, landing in her curls and in her own tresses.

Her eyes have the smallest glint of untruth in them.

"I'm a stranger with a gun, and you want me to give _you_ a ride."

"Yes. I know you're armed. But that's how desperate I am," Irene says, nodding frantically. The tears spring up again. If you're not going to help, I'll just walk but I have to get out of here. We all don't have the privilege of being born well off, Victoria. You're…Victoria Newman."

"Were you following me?" Victoria asks, tone measured and even. She discreetly cocks the gun. This girl knows too much. On a human level, she feels for this girl. From one person who experiences abuse to another, a small thread of sympathy sticks out, woven in a long tapestry she can't see clearly when she sees JT and all the violence and control he carries because he's so broken and breaks in a way that won't really be healed.

"Of course, I won't!" Irene rebuts, breath in a shudder. "I wasn't, I swear. This is all a coincidence. I live in a secluded place, but of course, I know the Newmans. Everyone does."

All she sees is another person that wants something from her.

All Victoria sees is the girl who blackmails her, a teddy bear being the casualty of her ingenuity and anger and this innocent girl who will be pay somebody's else transgression against her. It's irrational, she knows. But right now, remorse and humanity evade her.

Her arm lines the shot up as Irene's eyes grow wide. Just like she does in archery.

It's all just skill transference.

She turns, and runs and Victoria squeezes the trigger.

Because Victoria's a Type A personality, the devil is the details and execution is critical. She shoots twice. Once for the hit and again, so it's fatal. Hollow point bullets guarantee that. They enter the body with such force, embed themselves in the most vulnerable spaces and then open up like a dangerous, poisonous flower in bloom.

The silencer muffles the sound but the bullets do its job, and implants itself in the back of Irene's head. Irene wilts like a dead flower that loses its shine, its healthy green leaves from the root until there's nothing else. Victoria steps forward, and see the telltale someone who is truly dead. Irene's dark eyes with the brightness of a candle flame dancing on its wick are empty and unseeing. The flame is snuffed out and Victoria leaves, retreating to her car as if she is never there.

Irene's blood spreads out from her gaping wound over the gravel and soaks into the residual snow like spilled Pinot Noir wine.

—

Victoria calmly places the gun in the glove compartment, pulls off her gloves and throws it in there with it. Something that hurts and is untraceable sits in another thing that is trivial yet completely hers. There's a sense of equilibrium there.

She doesn't remember pulling away, doesn't remember the Welcome to Genoa City sign that whizzes by her line of vision. Home. Home is the living room strewn with toys and stuffed animals. Home is the walls vibrating with long played guitar notes, long after Reed plays them. It's the silence as she stares out of her window and watches the world tick by. Home is the sound of Katie's giggles and the conviction in her small voice when she argues why unicorns exist. Home is waking up from her nightmares and waking up bleary eyed to check if her house doesn't fall in itself, checking in her children with a racing heart to discover Johnny and Katie escape the confines of their room to sleep with Reed in his bed.

Three pieces that make up her heart and nourish her soul.

That's the dream.

That's where Victoria is driving toward with every stop and start, every smooth turn with the guidance of her headlights.

She's going home to her dream after the necessary nightmare.


End file.
